Tag Archives: World of Warcraft

It’s the end of the tier (at last). A tier in which I was in 2 guilds and we saw 3 raid instances. A tier with legendaries and trinkets and unprecedented levels of gear RNG that could thrill you or make you want to stab your computer in the span of 20 seconds or less.

IT’S OVER. WE DID IT. <Crisp> has killed Gul’dan a few times now and it’s fair to say Mythic Nighthold is solidly on farm from now until, what, like a month from now when Tomb of Sargeras is released?

Hey, I’m taking my month and running with it.

Running world quests for concordance AP, that is.

Yeah.

Anyway, whenever you hang out with the same group of nerds enough, things happen. Memes happen. So I reached back a bit and pulled out the let’s-make-an-album folder for <Crisp>, and this is the result.

Tastes Like Battle Chicken has existed for almost 8 years. That’s a really long time when you think about it. Lots of things kept me writing: the community (especially Twitter! <3) the Newbie Blogger Initiative (remember that?!), my friends at the time.

And lots of things kept me from not posting, but let’s not dwell on that.

I’ve missed this. So here I am.

Where is Here?

So I’ve been on kind of a WoW journey in the past few years. Left my guild of 6 years to join a new one, raided with that guild–dysfunctional family that it was–for 2 years, left that guild and transferred servers for the first time to raid with a new guild on Sargeras only to leave and join yet another guild.

Yeah okay. The point is, now I’m a shaman and I play in <Crisp> on Baelgun. And for the first time in a while, I’m pretty happy with where I am and what I’m doing.

Probably should’ve stuck with balance druid, though.

What Now?

Now we play and we raid and we chat on Twitter and we run Mythic+ and do world quests and complain about the legendary system and then complain about the legendary nerfs and post screenshots and get frustrated and get excited and all the things we’ve always done.

It’s here! Legion’s less than 12 hours away from launch. I’m sure there will be server queues and lag and downtime, but that has never stopped me from being awake at 3am to see it happen.

I’ve been almost exclusively doing invasions for levels and gear (I know I’m not alone, I see you all out there), and now I have a little army of level 100s ready to go. As I did at the end of Mists of Pandaria, here’s my collection of characters as we say goodbye to Warlords and a big hello to the Legion, starting with my new main ❤ :

I can’t help it, I have to take screenshots. It’s a thing, okay. And there are lots of pretty pretty things to take screenshots of in the Legion beta so far. I’m going to put everything else after a break; I don’t plan on posting spoilers but some people I know are really particular about their exposure, and I don’t want to risk ruining anything.

I haven’t posted in a while and there are reasons for that, but more to that momentarily. There are bigger fish to fry:

OVERWATCH Stress Test Weekend

I haven’t been this excited to buy a brand new game ever. I know there are a few people in the beta/stress test weekend who didn’t enjoy it, and that’s cool, but I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I want to play again (and again, and again).

Play of the Game seems to be connected to multikills/ultimate abilities, and as such it seems like Bastion & D.Va are (imo) the two easiest heroes to get PotG on, so here’s a couple of mine:

Thoughts on the Game

The Good

Objectives. I prefer objective-based play over deathmatches (most of the time), and I feel like the objectives are mostly balanced and equally achievable by both teams, which is one of those things that’s pretty important but you don’t usually notice it unless it’s a problem.

Heroes. There are a variety of heroes to choose from that fall into 4 different sort of “categories:” tank, support, defense, damage. Don’t get too caught up in that, though; not only do the playstyles differ between the categories, they differ strongly from character to character. For some maps, for instance; you’ll want to start with one tank and finish with a different one. On some you may choose to not have a tank or support at all. Feeling it out is the best way to get to know the heroes. Though it’s tempting to play one hero when you get comfortable with it, try to play around so you have a small collection.

Pace. The pacing in Overwatch is perfect. You don’t have long periods of waiting for fights (thanks largely in part to the objectives), but matches usually last a good 10+ minutes. Every once in a while you’ll be part of a shutout that happens in 5 minutes or less, but I didn’t see this much (and hey, at least then it’s over and you’re already starting the next game).

What Could Be Better

Bastion (Bastion is a robot hero that can either shoot on the run or deploy as a shielded turret). I hate writing this because there is nothing better than setting up Bastion in sentry mode on a defending team and just thumping away at the enemy team. But having been on both sides of the onslaught, Bastion is just a little overpowered right now. If he’s in sentry mode against a wall or a corner, the only way to kill him is to get close enough to him to get on top of him, bomb him, or pin him, and that limits the heroes that can take him down and the circumstances during which that can take place. Put two Bastions down supported by a team on an objective, and as an attacking team, you feel pretty hopeless. The nerf I would suggest to fix the problem is make the shield a little less durable–just enough that if I’m targeting his shield and putting significant damage into him, it actually breaks.

Personal Stats History. This may be something in the works that just won’t be live until the game is, but I have done exactly 0 reading (sorry!) so I’m going to mention it anyway. I like the commendation system and the cards and the ratings, but I would like to be able to see more than just my current match and averages. Somewhere I should be able to view my entire history on each hero with similar stats to what we see at the end of a game. Kind of like how you can look up your match histories on League of Legends–I want to do that for my Overwatch stats.

The game is super addictive. Really, really addictive. I’m going to have to set parental controls for myself when it comes out, but it’s addictive because it’s fun.

Okay, The Non-Update

One of the reasons I haven’t posted in a while is because my guild is no longer raiding.

We were on Mythic Mannoroth, averaging (good) pulls in the 15-20% range with 70 attempts when the tank we had taken on and geared up to replace our druid tank evaporated. He stopped showing up to raids at all without warning. Last I heard, his work schedule interfered with raiding too much (which would have been something nice to know beforehand).

This lead to a few weeks of trying to do Mannoroth with offspec and alt tanks. This lead to regression, and if you’ve raided much, you can probably guess how the rest went.

In the end, the decision was made to take a break from progression. As you might expect, half of the raid team left to find new guilds, another portion went AWOL, and the rest of us are just off doing other things and occasionally checking back in.

We did come together just enough to get our moose mounts, so at least there’s that. I’ve been spending most of my time playing EVE Online and Hearthstone and cleaning house in preparation for the holidays.

Raiding for the purpose of progression at any difficulty is a time commitment–at least, if you intend to be even moderately successful at it.

Experience and consistency go a long way in re-clearing farm content and killing new bosses in a timely manner. It’s not everything, but it’s definitely something.

When you flake out of your raid group, you’re being a selfish prick. There, I said it, and I’m not taking it back.

Am I saying that you shouldn’t quit when you’re tired of playing? That you shouldn’t back out when something in real-life supersedes in-game shenanigans? Of course not. But there are ways to handle these situations and still be considerate to the rest of your raid group.

The worst way to handle it? Stop showing up. That’s it–if your goal is to try to set your raid team back and be labeled a flake, that’s all you have to do. Easy, right?

If you are part of a raid team and you have real-life get in the way, tell someone. That’s it. Two seconds. “Hey, man, I’m really sorry, but my cat just developed super powers and is being taken to a private testing facility for magical creatures and I have to go with him. I won’t be available for the next few weeks.”

Granted, whether or not I believe your cat is teleporting around your living room is questionable, but hey, at least you told me.

If you decide you’re tired of playing/burnt out/not having fun anymore, warn your team and give us some time to find a replacement. “I just can’t get excited about the game anymore. I hate logging in and I’d rather snort glass than kill these bosses again. I’ll stay for the next two weeks, but then I’m done.”

Granted, it’s not as easy as just flat not showing up, but it’s also a) less of a dick move, and b) leaving your bridges in tact. Which may, as it turns out, be handy to you if you decide to come back in the future.

I’m an old lady, guys. I gotta stick by at least a few of my old-lady principles, and this is one of them. I love corn flakes and frosted flakes and honey-bunches-of-oats flakes (no, that’s a lie, I like the clusters). I don’t like raid flakes.